He Walks In Deserts
Artist Adventurer Author Obi Kaufmann’s latest exploration — on foot - takes him deep into California’s remarkable desertlands
A friend returned recently from Indiana, a state blessed with oceans of corn and solid people and decidedly Red State politicians, and he mentioned an experience he’d had there in a small town’s motel breakfast room.
He noticed a young woman at a nearby table looking at the foil ketchup packet she was opening.
“Ewww,” she exclaimed, “it’s from California!”
and dropped it like a moldy lemon.
It was a reminder about the risks of holding opinions of places we haven’t really explored. California’s bounty of tomatoes - more tons of tomatoes than any other state - are actually grown by farmers in staunchly Red counties, working alongside migrant labor from over the border.
We all hold notions that aren’t firmly anchored
in what the naturalist calls ‘ground truth’, which you can only get by actually standing in a place and carefully observing what’s there.
Say “deserts” and most of us are likely to conjure images of empty sand dunes and sterile badlands. But, as author, artist and keen nature observer Obi Kaufmann shows in his latest hand-illustrated…
